Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Just... Unbelievable.

It has really been 1000 days since "our" government has passed a budget. That's 3 years. Which is the biggest F. U. congress gets away with. Rather than having to shut down till a budget is passed, they get to automatically increase it without even a how do you do from the people they're taking the money from.


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Monday, January 16, 2012

Life of a charter pilot...

(Yes, I know that title gets used a lot in my blog.)

My day.
Times in Eastern.

1:30 am.  Phone call from dispatch, possible ASAP pop up air ambulance trip.  Will know for sure by 3 am. Will call by then.  Just go back to sleep.

Yeah, right....

3:30-3:45 am.  Finally fall back asleep.  No phone call.

7:30  ASAP pop up trip, Home to Dayton, pick up, Peoria IL, drop. Come home. Promise you'll be back by 1:30.

Yeah, right.
Times in Central. from here on.

10:30  Land in Peoria, see passenger off.  Get call from dispatch.  Wait there to see if they can sell the airplane on a trip headed back towards home.  Will call one way or another in 2 hours.  This I foresaw.

Yeah, 2 hours, right.

2 pm. Call Dispatch, Ask why they haven't called.  Told to wait while they make a call to see what's going on.

2:30 Call Dispatch.  Told we could have launched for home "anytime".  Pay FBO for forehead shaped hole in wall.

106 knot tail wind, shaves 15 minutes off of flight.

Times back in Eastern.

4:15 pm.  Land back home.  tremors from caffeine make filling out logs... difficult...

5:15 Clear airport finally, Airplane cleaned, restocked, reset, Paperwork filled, filed and mutilated.

How was your day?

Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Train people! TRAIN!

This article was posted to GBC tonight:

Collier judge upholds 'Stand Your Ground' stabbing death defense in teen's bus stop bullying.

What I'm about to rant... about... has very little to do with the actual article and a whole lot to do with idiots that post in the comments.

One of the comments that shall remain nameless to protect his idiocy said, "See, that's the problem. Having never been in the situation of fighting for my life, I don't know how I'd react to that stress..."

THAT'S WHY WE FUCKING TRAIN, YOU MORON!

Listen, few of us have been in that situation.  That's why we "game" it out.  We think about that situation, map out strategies, actions, reactions, discuss the plans with the wife, girlfriend, Rover the dog, whoever.  Then we go to a quality range, either take a class, talk to, or hire a reputable instructor.  See what works, what's been done before, what they recommend. Then we go back re-imagine the scenario, remap the strategies, actions, reactions and plans and then re-discuss what we're gonna do and what we'd like anyone with us to do to either help or stay out of harms way during the situation.

And, for fucks sake, if you've gotten your concealed carry permit (if required by your state) or are carrying a weapon for self defense and you haven't thought about what to do in those situations. FUCKING STOP! FIGURE IT OUT! DON'T BE A MORON!

Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Moment of Zen



43,000 ft. over eastern Colorado looking at the sun setting behind the Rockies.


Monday, January 2, 2012

Call me a moonbat

When I read stuff like this:

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/01/02/aclu-others-slam-obama-for-signing-defense-bill-that-includes-detainee/

It makes me really think we need a truly strict constitutionalists as our next president. Someone who will look at this and strike it off the books on principle.


- Edit: I fixed the link to a FoxNews story that's close to the opinion piece I originally read.  All copyrights belong to FoxNews etc.  No infringement is intended.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Sunday, January 1, 2012

Life of a Charter Pilot....

Or, Thems the ways it goes...

So, the day after New Years, we're on a trip that takes us from home base, to Music City, to City of the Rising Dead Bird, then south of the border, WAY south, to Honduras, sit for a while and then bring them back.  Supposed to have been 8 days on the road, most of that outside of the US.

Except

We were flying the airplane into Music City tonight, the night before, so we could be ready for an early launch tomorrow.  And as we're descending into the approach we get a lovely CAS (caution and advisory system) message announcing the right engine chip detector has... detected.  Great.  It's a white message in the air, as opposed to amber or red, only because there's not a blasted thing we can do about it while we're flying.

Of course as soon as we touch down it goes all amber and chimes at us.

Now, rather than racking up nearly 15 hours of flight pay, we're possibly losing this trip and stuck here.

Dammit, I'm trying to bank enough in flight pay each month to pick up my rotary rating by the end of the summer.

And with that I'm done whining.